Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 242728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1214(@200wpm)___ 971(@250wpm)___ 809(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 242728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1214(@200wpm)___ 971(@250wpm)___ 809(@300wpm)
I gasped at the endless love in his vow.
I wished I could make the same.
I would always be his.
Even when I wasn’t.
Tears pricked my eyes.
He didn’t know.
The heartlink hadn’t shown him what the fire had forced me to see.
Why I’d burned the world.
Why I’d slain everything.
It was because of him.
My heart skipped a beat, then two, then three as Quelis fed me the vision again, granting me no peace in Darro’s arms, no salvation from what I would become.
Tears glistened in his smoky, stunning eyes.
Blackened blood flowed from crisscrossing cuts and the cruel, awful wounds on his chest.
His hair was shorn like mine.
His skin no longer silver but dull.
No shadows curled from him.
No starlight glowed in his stare.
His power was gone.
Sucked dry.
Stolen.
By me.
I felt it in my blood.
The stalking, stealthy demise.
I glowed with darkness not light, and I relished in disastrous twin powers.
Within my veins, life and death merged.
I became a chimeric nightmare, just like the beasts he’d fashioned.
He shook his head.
Molten affection glowed in his ever-fading stare.
His lips formed the words I love you.
He gave me the vow of fate and forever.
“Il lapinzana nu, Runa....”
I sobbed so hard my ribs shattered.
I screamed so loud I didn’t hear the monstrous power exploding out of me.
Toward him.
Through him.
Killing him.
I howled as he dropped.
His eyes stayed open.
Dead—
A sob caught in my throat as my heart struggled to beat.
“Runa...” Darro stroked my cheek with worried fingertips. “Hey...it’s okay.” Withdrawing his body from mine with a wince, he gathered me in his embrace and held me tight. Our skin cooled from our pleasure and sweat made me shiver.
Everything was colder now, faded now.
My heart gave its final few kicks and I looked into his stunning, selfless face. I had so much to say to him. So much I wanted to tell him. So much happiness and gratefulness and love.
So, so much love.
My heart stuttered, skipped...faltered.
“I love you, Darro.” My voice was barely a whisper. “I always will. Be happy—”
My back arched in his embrace.
My suffering heart gave up.
It stopped beating.
The blood bind between Aktor and I snapped to its grisly finish.
Somewhere, back in the Nhil camp, Aktor gasped his final breath, mirroring my own fading.
I found Darro’s smoky gaze again, but it was so, so far away.
Everything was clouded now, hidden now.
I clung to the final glow of his love.
I opened my lips to tell him one last time...
...I slipped silently and still into nothing.
End of Book One